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Obama likely to expand a foreign-student pipeline the high-tech industry loves

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Re: Obama likely to expand a foreign-student pipeline the high-tech industry loves

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

("It's a bit sad..." seems passive-aggressive to me, but I give you the benefit of the doubt here) No one wants their advantages whittled away, regardless of whether it helps other people or not. This is simple self-preservation. It is a type of selfishness, yes, but I personally don't consider it a dishonorable type of selfishness.

> I personally don't consider it a dishonorable type of selfishness. I think the idea is that there are some advantages that aren't considered good for society. For some historical examples: "regardless of your potential or the quality of your work, you were born to a nobleman/peasant so you'll be a nobleman/peasant". For a more modern example: "regardless of your potential or the quality of your work, you were born…

Here's some more oversimplification.

If you find a group of peasants better than local peasants at task X you can import them and the locals will either move to do task X elsewhere, accept lower salaries or switch to task Y.

Task Y can pay less and make a lot of pissed off cynics. Task Y may be harmful to society at large, like crime or Wall St quant voodoo. Wall St attracts quants because A students were promised respectable jobs, but because of STEM oversupply or whatever, many of those jobs pay 30K.

So you can't force one narrow interest, superior performance at task X, without consequences. Everything must be done in moderation, even it means inferior quality X. Task Y may destroy all the productivity gains of task X, like middle management, crashing economy for 3 years, etc.

Re: Obama likely to expand a foreign-student pipeline the high-tech industry loves

#73
post #40

So who exactly is this helping? Ok, I know it helps out foreign students, but I am asking strictly from an American perspective. First and foremost, the governments job is to serve the American people. How does this specific action of Obama's immigration proposal help the American people as a whole? It's a 100% possibility that I have this wrong but I see two groups who this helps. The first group is foreigners who l…

Without foreign born workers, half of Silicon Valley wouldn't have existed. Is that a good enough reason?

No. The important question is not how many jobs there are, but how many - and at what price - and how does that price translate into a standard of living in the country where you live.

To protect US citizens there are laws in place. That however can be chipped away piece by piece. If tech companies had their way that would end.

There is a real concern about the (at least perceived) decline in the US standard of living for low/middle income folks, that is not necessarily anti-immigrant. You can't deny, immigrants built the country. However, America is going to have to deal with this problem of preserving the very ability of its citizens to be upwardly mobile. I'm not sure how much of the fear is real, but its out there.

Re: Obama likely to expand a foreign-student pipeline the high-tech industry loves

#74
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bit sad that you see competition on a global scale as "being fucked over". more offer+equal demand === lower salaries.

By that logic, tech workers should also demand legally capping the number of new graduates; they provide "more offer" too.

Worked out pretty well for the medical profession

Re: Obama likely to expand a foreign-student pipeline the high-tech industry loves

#75
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is an innovation shortage which will destroy your lively hoods in the long term. We are in many ways loosing this battle in manufacturing, I do not want it to happen to software.

We talked about this in one of my university classes recently. There's a difference between engineering a solution, and coding a spec. If you only need someone to implement your spec, then why not save money and outsource? Turns out, this has been happening a lot recently. In 2013 36% of CFOs (globally) said, "their firm was currently offshore outsourcing" [1]. I think we're losing that battle because nobody wants th…

>>Why not save money and outsource?

To be frank, I tried this for C++, and found that 'engineers' in India sucked and the competent ones cost almost the same as in the USA (70k/80k).

On the flip side I was able to find a really cheap graphics/publishing workflow (they clean MS word documents) but with 5x margins on our product, I didn't care nearly as much if we/I was paying people in India half the wages.

In truth, I think there are highly skilled jobs that can't be outsourced or rather have an even playing field.

Re: Obama likely to expand a foreign-student pipeline the high-tech industry loves

#76
post #6

If Obama's drive for immigration reform uses the logic of "STEM SHORTAGE!!!" as a basis for expanding OPT, it means that hyperbole has won, and we here at HN will suffer lower wages and a more competitive job market as a result. I'm not actually sure that this is what the rhetoric is going to look like, but the rest of my comment assumes that it will look that way as it pertains to the expansion of OPT. There is no S…

It is not right to say more STEM means wages will be lower. In high end professions like engineering etc. more people could mean faster innovation and faster expansion of the industry.

For example despite relatively higher number of tech employees Silicon valley engineers earn lot more than engineers pretty much everywhere else.

Even if there is a relative drop in wages, everyone wins because lower wages eventually drive the prices of services provided by these people. For example if Google's salary expenditure reduces it might also reduce advertising prices almost everyone else.

Re: Obama likely to expand a foreign-student pipeline the high-tech industry loves

#77
post #7
post #6

If Obama's drive for immigration reform uses the logic of "STEM SHORTAGE!!!" as a basis for expanding OPT, it means that hyperbole has won, and we here at HN will suffer lower wages and a more competitive job market as a result. I'm not actually sure that this is what the rhetoric is going to look like, but the rest of my comment assumes that it will look that way as it pertains to the expansion of OPT. There is no S…

It's a bit sad that you see competition on a global scale as "being fucked over". If someone else can do the same job just as well as you, you think employers should be forced to hire you instead just because you happened to be born in the right country? That's just selfishness that harms everyone else.

As long as we're going to maintain the fiction of national borders, it would be nice to do so in a way that doesn't consistently fuck over the lower rungs of society in favor of the politically connected.

Once we have a global governmental organization of some kind that can provide open immigration globally we can revisit this.

Re: Obama likely to expand a foreign-student pipeline the high-tech industry loves

#78

So who exactly is this helping? Ok, I know it helps out foreign students, but I am asking strictly from an American perspective. First and foremost, the governments job is to serve the American people. How does this specific action of Obama's immigration proposal help the American people as a whole? It's a 100% possibility that I have this wrong but I see two groups who this helps. The first group is foreigners who l…

"...the governments job is to serve the American people..."

Excuse me, sir, what is the hell that you are doing in all other countries then? If you want to be world's police, then better take care of all world's citizens.

Re: Obama likely to expand a foreign-student pipeline the high-tech industry loves

#79
post #78

So who exactly is this helping? Ok, I know it helps out foreign students, but I am asking strictly from an American perspective. First and foremost, the governments job is to serve the American people. How does this specific action of Obama's immigration proposal help the American people as a whole? It's a 100% possibility that I have this wrong but I see two groups who this helps. The first group is foreigners who l…

"...the governments job is to serve the American people..." Excuse me, sir, what is the hell that you are doing in all other countries then? If you want to be world's police, then better take care of all world's citizens.

Don't believe the rhetoric. American troops are in other countries to protect American interests, not to protect the rest of the world.

Re: Obama likely to expand a foreign-student pipeline the high-tech industry loves

#80
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we can easily reverse that. What about the local that now has to accept lower wages at home, which also affects their whole families and communities?

What about them?

I can see from this response and the other you made, you're not really willing to discuss this in any objective manner. It seems you have issues that go deeper than just this simple discussion. I hope you manage to work them out and good luck to you.
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